DH is on board. We are horrible with budgets, but we've had a steep learning curve. I'm thrilled we are making progress instead of going backwards. We've stopped living paycheck to paycheck. We have a baby savings. We have bumped up our 401(k) contributions. It's okay that some people don't agree with that method, but I watched a friend retire and hardcore fail because he hadn't planned on unplanned expenses. We are too close to retirement to not contribute.
Exactly for me, too. I’m saving regardless as we go because I’ve seen the impact of failure to save in my own family (not my household, but) and they had no debt yet also no savings.
Long time lurker here. I'm trying to get a budget together for 2019. We only have our monthly expenses and mortgage, which I put into a spreadsheet. We pay off any credit card bills monthly. I've been looking into an envelope /online envelope based budget, but I have a question. What do you do with the month that you set aside for budgets, but you don't use. Like my security system is quarterly, I don't spend on car maintenance or gifts monthly, but I'd like to put money away each month. Do you have separate savings accounts for that or just keep a spreadsheet for 1 savings account designating, what's in there. Our goal is to payoff our mortgage hopefully in the next 5-8 years and be debt free. TIA
Great question, I wrestle with this still and how I should best tackle it. I’m still playing around to see what will work best. Some categories just don’t get used up and I don’t save it over for the next month, I just have been either writing it back onto the budget again and just acknowledged my current checking balance, or lowering that item expected expense the next time. For example, this month was haircuts, a birthday, gifting (not Christmas), sports/entertainment, and movies that were budgeted but not used up. I’m not going to do anything with it either, just decide if next month if I’ll still allocate that much or not, and I’m just leaving it in checking. I know I’m not going to catch the month perfectly. Then, admittedly I go over in some (groceries especially) and I don’t save in a cash envelopes, so there’s that maybe for a reason.
I do have quite a few no fee/no min balance savings accounts, likely too many (5), but these are more like my envelopes for categories I feel I get the most use out of. Currently I’m using the accounts for these categories:
car and rental insurance, vacation savings, Christmas, car emergencies, and the last one I’m kind of combining for pet emergencies/appliance/phone replacement/small medical expense (clearly this one needs some fine tuning). The insurance, vacation, Christmas are defined budget amounts usually I transfer once a month and I get good use out of for my purposes and am keeping, they just work for me. The last two, that’s more up in the air whether I will keep as is or combine into a catch all savings. I want to keep aside money for car emergencies, new tires, etc, the unexpected type of vet bills not routine, glasses replacement, braces, etc.